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EASTHAM, Mass. — This is the time of year New Englanders wait for – beach weather! Many favorite spots, however, are suffering from accelerating erosion.
Scientists on Cape Cod are using new tools to get a better handle on beach erosion at some of the region’s most iconic beaches.
Nauset Light Beach in Eastham is a spectacular location on the Outer Cape.
“Sooner or later, it’s all going to wash away,” said Al Peterson, a lifelong resident of Eastham.
He’s witnessed bath houses being moved further inland and stairs repeatedly being decimated by rising sea levels.
Ocean-facing beaches along this area of the Cape are losing on average three feet of beach a year.
Nauset Light is the hot spot. Between 2012-2016, 45 feet of the beach was devoured by rising sea levels and increasingly stronger storms.
The lighthouse and the parking lot have already been moved further inland.
“Once the waves continue to undercut those areas that are larger, sections are going to collapse,” explained Scott Rasmussen from the National Park Service as he looked up at decimated dunes.
For the first time, he used LiDAR technology to scan areas of severe erosion earlier this spring.
“Having more data is never a bad thing.”
LiDAR stands for “light detection and ranging”. It basically bounces lasers off the dunes and creates highly detailed 3-D models.
“The technology is such that accuracy has increased tenfold,” Rasmussen said. “You can create a very accurate 3-D model of your dune or bluff and then come back in six months to a year later and see very small changes across the entire model,” Rasmussen said.
That’s the kind of critical information policy makers now need.
“It allows us to make very important decisions before things get a little dangerous. I mean we’re talking about encroaching parking lots, encroaching infrastructure, buildings, etc. We want to make sure that we know where we stand,” added Rasmussen.
Kristy Senatori, Executive Director of the Cape Cod Commission, an organization that coordinates planning and development among the Cape’s 15 towns, said “We’ve got 500 miles of coastline and beaches. Over the last several decades we’ve seen significant challenges as it relates to sea level rise and coastal erosion.”
She says having better data and information about how the topography is changing is critical.
“It’s not just environmental impacts. There are economic impacts. The viability of our tourism economy and our seasonal economy is significantly threatened if we don’t have beaches.”
The Cape Cod Commission has a free coastal planner on its website.
It provides an assessment of the different vulnerabilities specific areas of the Cape face from things like sea level rise, storm surge, and erosion.
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